Here's The Thing
by EchoMoonHuntress
Summary: They say the world is a dangerous place, full of choices that decide your fate. Hunter only understands that now. - Duck Hunt Duo, for Paradigm of Writing's contest.


**For Paradigm of Writing's contest, where you push out of your comfort zone and write about a neglected Smasher. Everyone's done the human characters allowed for the contest, so I'd thought I'd give the infamous Duck Hunt a chance. Hunter is the dog and Ducky is the duck, by the way.**

 **Umm I wrote this through writer's block and I'm really displeased with this outcome. But it was the best out of the 20392389422 drafts I tried. Not edited very well, since it was completed late at night. Okay now I'm just stalling you so I'll shut up.**

 **Good luck to everyone else in the contest!**

* * *

Hunter does not like his new room.

It's a nice room, spacious and decorated; the bed is perfect, just his size, and the small bed next to it fits Ducky as well. The walls are painted bright blue and green and white, as if to display cheerfulness.

Hunter doesn't believe those walls, because the room is almost like a prison cell to him. On the plains, he could run freely in the grass and Ducky could fly as high as her heart contended. Here, he can only run from one wall to another. Ducky can only fly so high before her head hits the ceiling.

There are no windows in the room. There is one door, though, and it's always unlocked. But even if Hunter and Ducky try to escape, the mansion is very big and Hunter knows that he will get lost. It's a maze, a maze that no matter how hard he might look, he will never find the exit.

Hunter lies down on his bed and tries to ignore the panicky feeling growing inside of him.

* * *

 _(Here's the thing about Hunter and Ducky: they are wild animals, and they roam as they will; cages and prisons are nothing but horrible, life-changing traps.)_

* * *

They stay in the room for one, two, three days. On the fourth day, they have a 'battle'.

Hunter finds himself on a stone platform, with Ducky perched on his shoulder. The whole battlefield is stone and appears to be a floating island, in the middle of the sky. Hunter can feel Ducky's tense up, as if she wants to take flight, but he knows she won't do it. Ducky is a lot of things, and _suspicious_ is one of them. She has to know her surroundings before she is content with flying around freely.

Underneath them is a boxer, a boy who is punching the air. To their right, on another platform, is a monkey wearing a red hat. Hunter's chest squeezes when he sees the monkey has a wooden barrel gun.

And then, suddenly, there is a loud voice, a voice that leaves a ringing in Hunter's ears and he's not quite sure what the announcer said until he sees the monkey leaping straight towards him—with the gun pointed at his chest.

Hunter hears a loud popping sound, and he figures it can't be the gun, it doesn't sound like a gunshot, he _knows_ what a gunshot sounds like—

—but then there's this awful clenching in his chest and Hunter staggers backwards, _off_ the platform and getting a brief sensation of falling before crumpling in a heap on stone, Ducky lying on top of him.

Hunter struggles for air and he is screaming and he wonders if he's dying, because it hurts so much, he can feel pain, he knows what pain feels like now—

—and then he can't feel anything at all.

* * *

 _(Here's the thing about pain: it sends fire coursing through your veins and it won't stop burning until you can't feel it anymore, until you can't feel_ _anything_ _anymore)._

* * *

When Hunter wakes up (he doesn't remember falling asleep, how strange), his body feels extremely sore.

His joints are stiff and even stretching them requires some effort. He feels like an idiot, but then he notices the way Ducky is hunched over, how long it takes for her to spread her wings to only fly a short distance. They are both hurting, and they both look like fools.

Hunter tentatively moves his left paw, and there is some kind of hideous fury in there that makes him scream, the noise echoing around the walls, but never escaping them.

Hunter draws in his breath and takes a step with his right paw. It doesn't hurt so much. His back legs are fine, too, just sore. Only his left leg delivers the excruciating pain that he remembers from the fight.

Ducky flies to his left shoulder, landing there, and then enfolds her wings and hunches over. She normally adds little weight to him, but suddenly Hunter's paw feels heavy and it's hard to move his paw forward. Not like he wants to, anyways, or else he'd feel the pain in his paw again.

Limping subsides the pain a little. Hunter decides to do that, and though it slows him down, at least he is not screaming anymore.

* * *

 _(Here's the thing about injuries: they never go away, ever; they stay as a nagging thorn at your side and they leave awful memories behind.)_

* * *

"Why are you smiling, little one?"

No reason, not one that you would care, Hunter thinks, digging his claws into the ground. Fox stands across from him, and he's fiddling with something on his wrist. For some reason, it sends a jolt of fear through Hunter and he feels like he just swallowed a small stone.

Fox is one of the veterans, an old Smasher. He's ruthless when it comes to fighting. Merciless. Cold. Even with Hunter's lame leg, Fox will bestow no sympathy to the dog and will have no hesitation on beating him up.

A small shiver goes up Hunter's spine.

"I mean," Fox continues, still in that unpleasant, bored tone, "we both know I'm going to win. Are you smiling because you think you have a chance?"

Of course not. Hunter knows he's going to lose. But he always smiles in the worst of times. But it's not like Fox would understand. For him, this is entertainment.

"Give it your all," Fox says now, and his voice is laced with humor. Oh, how ironic. "I hope you aren't as weak as you look."

Hunter clenches his teeth, and he can feel Ducky's gaze on him. He doesn't spare a glance at her.

Fox smiles, and his teeth are sharp, glittering white. "I would hate to have an easy fight."

* * *

 _(Here's the thing about the veterans: they are steel, and they can bend and bend but they will never break, and no matter what you do, they will come back to bite you.)_

* * *

He feels like he is broken, like someone crushed him and stomped all over him. Perhaps that is what happened, after all.

Hunter lies on his bed, eyes staring into nothing. Fox practically destroyed him—his left leg looks funky, out of shape, doing little things like shifting around to get comfortable makes his whole body scream, and his fur is falling out in clumps, losing the orangish color that it once had.

Ducky isn't as colorful as she used to be, either. Her head is rapidly losing the magenta color, fading to a tarnished pink, and the blue is barely visible, blending in with the white feathers. She looks like an old stuffed animal, used and worn throughout the years.

They are fading, Hunter realizes, as he leaves the door to his room open. Everyone walks past, eyes sliding from the room to the wall. Though dog and duck sit in the doorway, nobody seems to notice them, as though they blend in with the walls.

Hunter wonders if they ever remember inviting the duo. Something in his gut tells him they don't.

* * *

 _(Here's the thing about being invisible: you could do something special, and nobody would notice; you could do something dangerous, and nobody would notice; you could_ _die_ _, and still no one would notice.)_

* * *

Hunter wins a fight.

He goes against some water pokémon, and it goes by the name of Greninja. Like Hunter, he is a newcomer, but Greninja has actually been able to win a few battles. That's what pokémon are supposed to do—train, fight, win. Greninja is not like the veterans, but he is powerful.

But Hunter gives it his all in the fight. Right off the bat, he notices that Greninja normally stays a few paces away, like a traditional pokémon fight. Hunter closes in the distance and doesn't even give Greninja a chance to attack, to recover, to even breathe. He slashes and shoots Greninja until the pokémon is staggering backwards, _off_ the ledge of the map, and Hunter doesn't know how long he does this until he finds himself in a place with gray clouds and beautiful arches. It looks like heaven.

And then he can hear loud words in the dim, shouting, "THE WINNER IS…DUCK HUNT!" It sounds strange. Foreign.

Hunter waits to feel some kind of happiness, but instead all he feels is an urge to run far, far, away and never look back.

* * *

 _(Here's the thing about victory: you push your way through everything to reach the top, and once you do you turn around and see the damage you have done, and that feeling is not happy at all.)_

* * *

He keeps getting pats on the back, and everyone is congratulating him for actually winning a battle.

Yet Hunter is disgusted with himself. When he returned to his room after winning, he threw up. It was awful. It's not a way that Hunter wants to win victory.

He knows that Ducky isn't happy, either. She keeps her eyes on the ground, and occasionally Hunter can hear her quack. She sounds sad and guilty, like him. They should be happy, as the veterans would say. But they aren't.

Hunter goes to watch one of Greninja's fights, just for the heck of it. The pokémon is against that monkey with the gun, and Greninja easily tosses him aside like a rag doll. Even when Greninja wins, the monkey does not move from being a lump on a ground, and he has to be carried off the stage.

It only hits Hunter then. He either has to win all of these battles, and swallow his guilt, or keep getting beaten up for eternity. There is no easy way out of this; there is no way out of this. It's a trap, an endless punishment that results in some kind of pain either way.

Hunter thinks that death would be a better option.

* * *

 _(Here's the thing about torture: it is worse than death, because you are still alive and you endure it everyday; it is some kind of an awful cycle.)_

* * *

 _(Here's the thing about a cycle: it goes on and on and on, never stopping, always continuing. Even if you try to get out, it keeps moving, it never seems to have an_

 **end.**


End file.
